There are over 100 million horses, donkeys and mules in the world today and owners of these animals can be found on almost every continent and in almost every society. The Horse Course will cover many unique aspects of equine ownership and touch upon the science behind many of today’s management practices.
Coat Colors
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En provenance du cours de University of Florida
The Horse Course: Introduction to Basic Care and Management
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Basic Equine Physiology
This week will start out with covering some basic physiology. We will then advance into hoof anatomy and care. This will lead to spending a lecture discussing laminitis, a serious hoof condition in horses and other equids. The final two lectures will jump into the various coat colors and markings in horses.
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Chris J. Mortensen, Ph.D.Professor
Animal Sciences
All right, welcome back and in this lecture
we are going to start talking about coat colors.
Now, you know, first talking abut horse identification and why it's important.
You know, first, we need to be
able to distinguish between, you know, different animals.
So we use, you know, different markings to do that.
And it's also important for coat color and markings,
you know, anything you do with the breed registry.
So this is actually a registry application for the Australian Quarter horse industry.
So hello to our friends down under.
And you also, if, if you're dealing with
a veterinarians, your medical records, or anything like that.
So the most simple way that we, we do this is through coat color and coat markings.
So that's really the purpose of the next two lectures.
But before we jump into that, there are some other aspects or other ways
that we do identify horses, and, and one way we do that is branding.
Now, hot branding like you imagine with, with cows, you
know, with the burning brand and, and, and burning on there.
You routinely don't see with horses.
You may see it occasionally, but it's pretty rare.
Really what's more common is what's called freeze branding.
That's where you take the brand and dip it
in liquid nitrogen and then hold it on the horse.
And what that does is it destroys the pigment cells in the
skin, and then when the hair grows back, it grows back white.
So that is what you are actually seeing is a freeze brand.
So, that's, that's really, really common in the horse
industry, at least here in the United States it is.
Now, one technology that we're seeing more and more of throughout the world
and here in the United States is microchips, and here in the United
States, again, it's, it's a big industry in our pet industry with our
cats and our dogs, and we do see it in the horse industry.
And what this is a microchip that's about the size
of a grain of rice that's put in the neck,
and then a handheld reader you, you run it over
the neck, and it pops up a unique identification number.
So we're starting to see that a lot more.
And then one that's, that's still around
that you still see, particularly with race horses,
is a lip tattoo, where you actually have
an individual number that's assigned to that horse.
So if you ever have an ex-race horse or you do own a
race horse, you'll notice that they, they will have a lip tattoo routinely.
Now, that jumps into, really the two basic ways of identifying horses and the first
is, in this lecture is coat colors, and
we're going to divide these really into three categories.
So, with colors with black points, you can see
this picture, this is actually of a bay horse
and when we talk about black points, we're talking
about the mane, the tail, and then the legs.
So you can see in this horse, those are all black points.
Now, colors with non-black points, if you look at the
same areas, and this is of a chestnut or what we
call chestnut, you can see the mane, the tail and
the legs are generally the similar color of the horse itself.
So that's non-black points.
And then the third category is we're going to
talk about white colors or white coat color patterns.
So this horse, a grey horse, you see even if
it has black points or non-black points, it doesn't matter.
It's a white coat color pattern.
Now, the first color with black points obviously is a black horse,
so there are black horses that have completely, their entire coat is black.
So there's not brown or reddish hair, as you can see in that picture.
Now, they may have white markings, so if they do
have white markings, they can still be a black horse.
And in the next lecture, we'll talk about markings,
but those are generally around the legs and the face.
So they can have white there, but
generally, their, their coat is entirely black.
Now, you may get a horse that looks kind
of black, but they actually have some light areas.
So this is the black brown or what we call as mealy.
And so what you're looking at here is you can see in
this horse here around the flanks, the muzzle, and around the tail,
you can see those lightened areas, so we call that, that mealy,
and so this horse wouldn't be black; it would actually be considered brown.
Now, there's different intensities of brown, so it goes
anywhere from dark brown, seal brown to light brown.
Now, here in this lecture I'll, I'll, I'll kind of [LAUGH].
This is with, with, with all my students this is what I run into.
Colors are not, you know, especially coat colors, it, it's not a hard, fast rule.
There is some bleed over.
So, some people may say, well, that horse,
here let's just us this horse as an example.
Well, I would call that dark brown.
And you're like, no, no, no, that's seal brown.
Well, you know what?
We both could be right.
To me, that's a dark brown horse; to you, it's a seal brown horse.
So you know, generally both of us could, could be correct and really where we
start to see some of the overlap especially when you go from brown to bay.
So a lot of times people that aren't familiar
with coat colors, or it's kind of one that's in between.
It could be brown.
It could be bay.
You know, you would, you would consider it either or, and you both would be correct.
And, especially when we look at the different intensities of bay.
You know, these dark or mahogany bays on a day,
one day I may say, oh, it's a bay horse.
The next day I may say, oh, it's a brown horse.
You know, you're both kind of correct, but as you,
you see it starts to get lighter here and here.
You know, the more proper term is that's a bay horse.
Now, those were dis, you know, distinct horse colors with black points.
Now, I'm going to cover one that can be either or.
It can either have black points or non-black points, and that's a dun.
So the duns are the, are, are the only coat color that,
you know, we'll reference in this lecture, or, or in this course.
That is a coat color with black or non-black points.
Now, your typical duns, you know, or, or what some people think typically
are duns are, are with the black points, and they have that yellow-tan coat.
And then, you can see this dorsal stripe down the back on this foal right here.
So, we call that the dorsal stripe.
And then also you get these, what we call
primitive markings or almost zebra striping around the legs.
So, those are what we call Duns.
Now, a buckskin looks like a dun, it just doesn't have those markings.
It doesn't have the dorsal stripe or the primitive markings on the legs.
So if it doesn't have that, but the yellow-tan
coat and black points, we would call that a buckskin.
Now, the duns with non-black points.
So, here you can see on this horse, this is a dun, but you can look,
look at her, and you can see that she doesn't have any of the black points.
You know, she has a yellow or almost reddish coat color.
You know, we call those the red duns.
Their dorsal strip is either red or
a little bit lighter and those primitive markings.
So, this horse does have the primitive
marking here and does have the dorsal stripe.
So, these non-black point duns, you'll hear them called claybanks;
you'll hear them called apricot duns, strawberry duns, or red duns.
Now, to jump into the ones that are definitely colors with non-black
points, the, the most common is the chestnut as we highlighted earlier.
And you can see the, the coat color is either red or brownish-red and
then also the, the tail and mane, you know, usually dark red or brownish-red.
Now, if it is kind of a blonde mane and tail, so
you can see here the blonde mane and tail on this horse.
Okay.
We call that flaxen.
So then we would say, it's a chestnut with a flaxen
mane or tail, or, you know, other coat colors that have this.
Now, here's again one of those that could be either or, and that's
the term sorrel, that you'll hear,
commonly hear especially in the United States.
It's, people use that rather than chestnut.
Chestnuts kind of, you know, here in the United States when we call
them chestnuts, we kind of think of English riding and European type riding.
And then we say sorrels, you know that's more associated with
Western type riding, you know, working cows or going to western shows.
So, they're really interchangeable, they're, they're
the same thing, just a different term.
So, you'll hear the term sorrel,
and basically sorrel, chestnut are interchangeable.
Now, the palomino is pretty easy to describe.
It's very popular in the United States as a coat color.
And, that's this golden-yellow coat with this
lighter, you know, yellow light mane and tail.
And then, a lighter version of that is the Cremello,
and you can see that, that coat is almost, almost cream.
And then they have pink skin.
You can see here, pink skin and blue eyes.
Okay, so, little bit, much lighter skin, much lighter skin tone and in coat color.
Now, we'll jump into the whites or the white coat color patterns.
And the first one is a horse that is, that is white.
So this isn't a cremello, it, it doesn't
have any yellowish color to it; it's pure white.
But it, it's also important to remember that there's no true albino horses.
Albino, albinos that if they, if they are, if there is an albino horse, they actually
die n utero or during pregnancy, so the
pregnancy never carries to term, and they're never born.
So you do have, have true white horses, just you'll never have an albino horse.
Now, the grey horses are basically white horses.
But they have this, this dark coloring kind of interspaced throughout.
So, you can kind of, kind of see that.
You know, in this grey horse, where the, you
know, the hind end is a little bit dark.
Has some dappling right here going on and, and dark legs.
So, that's a grey, grey horse.
Grey horses are actually born almost solid.
Or almost what we'll, we'll call the next one will be roan.
And then, they get lighter with age.
So, you know, as they age, they actually get lighter in their coat.
Now, a roan horse is a horse that has pretty much even distribution of
colored hair and white hair, and it gives them what we call a roan pattern.
So this is a blue roan.
So you can see throughout that coat, you know, there's a lot light areas.
So that's that intermixed colored white hair.
Now, what's also interesting about roans is the head, tail,
and legs generally are solid off the base coat color.
So if we look at the three main types of roans;
there's the blue roan, the red roan, and the strawberry roan.
And then the blue roan, which is actually my favorite coat color.
I love blue roans.
Really, really pretty horses.
So that base color is black.
The red roan base color is actually a bay.
And then the strawberry roan color is actually a chestnut.
[BLANK_AUDIO]
Okay, and then finally we're going to kind of jump
into these painted horses or pinto type horses and.
There's three main patterns that we're talk about in the,
the first two that we'll talk about are these asymmetrical patterned.
So, that means it, it's not an even
distribution of, of paint color throughout the coat.
So, it's, it's uneven.
This asem, asymmetry that we'll talk about.
So, the first one is, is a tobiano, and you can see the description there.
White feet and legs, their heads darker.
The while crosses over the top.
In this picture, it's over the neck and the withers.
And what I like to tell my students is
it's almost as if somebody carefully drew that pattern.
And actually, my mentor told me this years ago
that, you know, to distinguish between a tobiano and an
overo, which we'll talk about next, is the tobiano
somebody took careful amount of time to draw that pattern.
So, that's one of the first things I
look when I'm distinguishing between tobianos and then Overos.
Overos are anything that's not tobiano.
And there's three main types, and the first one is the frame overo,
so you can see the description there, tends to have dark feet and legs.
A white head, white sides and irregular white patterns.
Now, you'll notice in this image, this is a frame overo.
But, it has a dark head, okay?
So again, these rules with coat color, there
is some wiggle room in there, you know.
It's, it's not always 100%.
So, this, this is a white overo.
And then, the next type of overo is the sabino.
And you can see, you really splat, you know, splotchy, irregular pattern.
And again, like what I tell my students
is, where tobiano, somebody carefully drew it in, and
overo is like somebody just went and splashed
paint all over the place, all over the horse.
So that's, kind of, how I easily distinguish them.
Before jumping into some of these other roles.
And then the final one is this one's really neat is the splashed white, and you
can see that white really underneath the horse
up through the throat latch and the face.
And I've read where somebody described this as almost putting a horse
in a pool of paint, white paint and dipping them in hooves first.
And then pulling them out and letting them dry.
And that's almost what it looks like.
So that's, that's called a splashed white.
Now, the final type of, of white coat color pattern
is in these paint pinto type horses or the symmetrical patterns.
So it's almost an even distribution of paint throughout.
And one of these is, is known as the leopard, and I think that
one's a, a great, you know, example of what a leopard coat color looks like.
So, that kind of ends the different paint pinto types.
Now, in the next lecture, we're going to talk about different markings.
So this is actually showing you the facial markings.
We'll talk about facial marking and leg markings.
So, I'll see you then.
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